Charleston and beyond

So, where were we...Oh ya, Charleston.  Spent another day there, and this day we went to The Old Slave Mart one of several such places where slaves for years where bought and sold.  It's a museum now, and very interesting.  What a dark period for the states, and it lasted over 400 years!  They had pieces of the shackles and whips that were used on these people. They had lists of how the slaves were assessed for their value, with no regard to whether they were being separated from their loved ones. The thought was that they would forget easily and move in to their new situation.  The building also had a section called a 'barracoon' a slave jail where they were held until the auction and a morgue was also attached.  The slaves would be fed, cleaned and given new clothes to be worn at the auction to make them look in better shape than they were.  We were asked to refrain from taking pictures.

Their aquarium was really cool too, they have a monster round tank that must be 3 stories high with all kinds of fish swimming about, even a tortoise.  They have a few animals that would not survive back into the wild as they have been wounded to badly and in the tortoises case had been too habituated to humans feeding it.

We walked around the older sections of the city and saw some amazing old homes, just beautiful.  Some of them are designed to take advantage of the sea breezes.  They are long and narrow with a lovely porch down one side into the yard and lovely yards along in front of the porch.  This section of the city has an ordinance that any building older than 80 years has to maintain its original face.  It can't be razed and rebuilt.

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There's a great market place that covers many blocks with vendors of all sorts of items for sale.  The sweetgrass baskets are beautiful, its an art that was brought over by the slaves from West Africa.  I'm regretting not biting the bullet and spending the money to buy one.

We moved on the next day, had to be off the dock early to coincide with slack tide.  The current from the tide and the river runs quite quickly so getting that little break made for an easy exit.  We had to wait for an hour though for the bascule bridge to open at 9 am so we circled around the harbour til then.  We travelled through marshy lands mostly, that are shallow.  Homes on the banks have piers of several hundreds of feet in some cases and at the end have a lift for their boat and a smll dock.  Bigger powerboats that pass us have huge wakes, though they slow down generally to pass us, that doesn't help with the erosion of the edges.  This erosion whether from boats or currents and tides cause all kinds of shoaling that we all have to watch out for.

Dolphin

We've been buzzed by fighter jets practicing their touch and goes, seen lots of dolphins, they're more enjoyable to watch.  One cruised beside us for a while, I didn't think fast enough to video the event.  They are much bigger than I realized.

Forest Gump

River Street

We stopped at a marina just past Savannah and took the city transit to the old part of the town.  They have hop on and hop off trolley tours of the older parts of the city with a few actors that come on at different stops and tell a bit more. Part of the Forest Gump movie was filmed in a couple different places here, including the square where Forest told his story. This city has many squares from its original planning that are beautiful, with Live Oaks and other trees and shrubs through out the squares and along the old streets.  Live Oaks don't lose their leaves and are very robust.  They live for many hundreds of years and are strong against hurricanes.  They are very majestic.

Cotton Exchange

The riverfront of Savannah is much like it was centuries ago, the two closest streets to the river front are paved with ballast rock from ships beginning the early 1700's.  There is a 40 foot or so drop from the rest of town to the waterfront over two streets.  The Cotton exchange building is still here, where the price of cotton was determined. The cotton wagons would go along this street above and the factors would come out onto the walkways and look down to see the quality of the cotton and determine a price.
Back near the marina we're at we went for a bike ride through the Wormsloe Plantation, that has been owned by the same family since 1733.  The Live Oaks that line this driveway that is 1.5 miles long are a couple hundred years old and still looking beautiful.
There was a very high tide this morning, and they will will be high adding a couple inches each high until after the full moon on Tuesday night.  I was wearing gumboots to get to shore this morning, others had to go barefoot.  At least the water isn't too cold.
We are hoping to move on tomorrow - warm weather is beckoning us, but it's further south.  We are just inside the Georgia border heading to Florida next....

High tide this morning.... had to wear gumboots to get to shore